1. Introduction
Fixed point theory has become the focus of many researchers lately due its applications in many fields see [
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12]). The concept of b-metric space was introduced by Bakhtin [
13], which is a generalization of metric spaces.
Definition 1 ([
13])
. A b-metric on a non empty set X is a function such that, for all the following three conditions are satisfied:(i) if and only if
(ii)
(iii)
As usual, the pair is called a b-metric spaces.
A three-dimensional metric space was introduced by Sedghi et al. [
14], and it is called
S-metric spaces. Later, and as a generalization of the
S-metric spaces,
-metric spaces were introduced. In [
15], extended
-metric spaces were introduced
Definition 2 ([
15])
. Let X be a non empty set and a function If the function satisfies the following conditions for all :- 1.
- 2.
then the pair is called an extended -metric spaces.
First, note that, if then we have an -metric spaces, which leads us to conclude that every -metric spaces is an extended -metric spaces, but the converse is not always true.
Definition 3 ([
15])
. Let be an extended -metric space. Then,- (i)
A sequence is called convergent if and only if there exists such that goes to 0 as n goes toward ∞. In this case, we write .
- (ii)
A sequence is called a Cauchy sequence if and only if goes to 0 as goes toward ∞.
- (iii)
is said to be a complete extended -metric space if every Cauchy sequence converges to a point
- (iv)
Define the diameter of a subset Y of X by
In the extended
-metric spaces, we define a ball as follows:
Next, we present some examples of extended -metric spaces.
Example 1. Let be the set of all continuous real valued functions on Defineand It is not difficult to see that is a complete extended -metric spaces.
2. Extended Partial -metric spaces
In this section, as a generalization of the extended -metric spaces, we introduce extended partial -metric spaces, along with its topology.
Definition 4. Let X be a non empty set and a function If the function satisfies the following conditions for all :
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
then the pair is called an extended partial -metric spaces.
First, note that, if then we have a partial -metric spaces, which leads us to conclude that every -metric spaces is an extended -metric spaces, but the converse is not always true.
Definition 5. Let be a extended partial -metric space. Then,
A sequence is called convergent if and only if there exists such that goes to as n goes toward ∞. In this case, we write .
A sequence of elements in X is called -Cauchy if exists and is finite.
The extended partial -metric spaces is called complete if, for each -Cauchy sequence there exists such that A sequence in an extended partial -metric spaces is called 0-Cauchy if We say that is 0-complete if every 0-Cauchy in X converges to a point such that
Note that every extended -metric spaces is an extended partial -metric spaces, but the converse is not always true. The following example is an example of an extended partial -metric spaces which is not extended -metric spaces.
Example 2. Let be the set of all continuous real valued functions on Defineand First, note that, for all , we have In the last inequality, we used the fact that, for all , we have Hence, is an extended partial -metric spaces, but it is not an extended -metric spaces, since the self distance is not zero.
In the extended partial
-metric spaces, we define a ball as follows:
Definition 6. An extended partial -metric spaces is said to be symmetric if it satisfies the following condition: Theorem 1. Let be a complete symmetric extended partial -metric spaces such that is continuous, and let T be a continuous self mapping on X satisfying the following condition:where and for every we have Then, T has a unique fixed point say In addition, for every , we have Proof. Since
X is a nonempty set, pick
and define the sequence
as follows:
Note that, by
we have
Now, pick two natural numbers
Hence, by the triangle inequality of the extended partial
-metric space, we deduce
By the hypothesis of the theorem, we have
Therefore, by the Ratio test, the series
converges. Now, let
Hence, for
, we deduce that
Taking the limit as
we conclude that
is a Cauchy sequence. Since
X is complete,
converges to some
such that
Now, using the fact that
T and
are continuous, we deduce that
Taking the limit in the above equalities, we can easily conclude that
Hence,
u is a fixed point of
To show uniqueness, assume that there exists
such that
and
Thus,
which leads us to a contradiction. Therefore,
T has a unique fixed point in
X as desired. □
Now, we present the following example as an application of Theorem 1.
Example 3. Let be the set of all continuous real valued functions on Defineand Now, let T be a self mapping on X defined by In this case, we have On the other hand, it is not difficult to see that, for every we have Thus, it is not difficult to see that Therefore, all the conditions of Theorem 1 are satisfied and hence T has a unique fixed point which is in this case 0.
Theorem 2. Let be a symmetric complete extended partial -metric spaces such that is continuous and T be a continuous self mapping on X satisfyingwhere ψ is a comparison function (i.e., is an increasing function such that for each fixed .) In addition, assume that there exists such that, for every and , we have Then, T has a unique fixed point in X.
Proof. Let and . Let n be a natural number such that .
Let
and
for
. Then, for
and
we have
Hence, for
goes to 0 as
k goes toward ∞. Therefore, let
k be such that
Note that
. Therefore,
. Hence, for all
we have
Since
, thus
Now, taking the limit of the above inequality as
, we get
Hence,
F maps
to itself. Since
, we have
. By repeating this process, we get
That is,
for all
. Hence,
Therefore, is a Cauchy sequence and, by the completeness of X, there exists such that converges to u as k goes toward ∞. Moreover, .
Thus,
F has
u as a fixed point. We prove now the uniqueness of the fixed point for
F. Since
for any
, let
u and
be two fixed points of
F:
Thus, that is and hence, F has a unique fixed point in X. On the other hand, goes to u as k goes toward ∞. Hence, goes to u as m goes toward ∞ for every x. That is . Therefore, T has a fixed point. □
Theorem 3. Let be a complete symmetric extended partial -metric spaces such that is continuous, and let T be a continuous self mapping on X satisfying the following condition:where , for every . Then, T has a unique fixed point and . Proof. We first prove that if T has a fixed point, then it is unique. We must show that, if is a fixed point of T, that is, then .
From
, we obtain
which implies that we must have
Suppose
be two fixed points, that is,
and
. Then, we have
. Relation
gives
Therefore,
. Thereby, we get the uniqueness of the fixed point if it exists. For the existence of the fixed point, let
arbitrary, set
and
. We can assume
for all
; otherwise,
is a fixed point of
T for at least one
. For all
n, we obtain from
Therefore,
. Thus,
Let
. By repeating this process, we obtain
Therefore,
. Let us prove that
is a Cauchy sequence. It follows from
that, for
:
Thus, for every
, as
, we can find
such that
and
for all
. Then, we obtain
. As
, it follows that
. Thus,
is a Cauchy sequence in
X and
. By completeness of
X, there exists
such that
Now, we shall prove that
. For any
,
Therefore,
giving
Since
and
T are continuous, we have
goes to
, and
n goes toward
Therefore, we obtain
As and from , we obtain and then . □
In closing, we would like to present to the reader the following open questions:
Question 1. Is it possible to omit the continuity of T in Theorem 1, and obtain a unique fixed point?
Question 2. If we omit the symmetry condition of the extended partial -metric spaces in Theorem 2, is it possible to prove the existence of a fixed point?